World

Belgium police foil 'major attack,' killing two terror suspects

Caption:Journalists and residents stand near police vehicles as police set a large security perimeter in the city center of Verviers on January 15, 2015, during a 'jihadist-related' anti-terrorism operation.

Officials in Belgium say two people are dead, and one person is in custody after an anti-terror raid in Verviers that targeted "jihadists" who had recently returned from Syria. The group was planning to carry out a "major attack," according to Belgium's federal prosecutor.

A source in the country's ministry of justice told Belgium's Nieuwsblad newspaper that "a second Paris has been avoided."

"I was alone in the street and saw two young, around 25 or 30 years old, of North African origin, dressed in black and carrying a bag of the same color," she told Le Soir. She added that they "appeared distraught."

Eyewitness video believed to show the raid captured police shouting commands to unknown individuals as gunshots ring out in the darkness. Police with riot shields are seen entering a burning building.

Another captured the gunshots.

Neither video has been confirmed as authentic by Mashable.

“The suspects immediately and for several minutes opened fire with military weaponry and handguns on the special units of the federal police before they were neutralized,” the prosecutor, Eric Van Der Sypt, said of the raid. “These were extremely well-armed men.”

Local media report that the raid was conducted on a group of individuals linked to Amedy Coulibaly, the gunman who killed four hostages in a kosher super market in Paris on Jan. 9.

Coulibaly proclaimed his allegiance to the Islamic State in a video posted on YouTube after his death in a shootout with police that ended the siege. It was later revealed that he purchased the weapons used in his attack, and the attack on the Paris offices of the Charlie Hebdo magazine, from an arms dealer in Belgium.

"This is a group that dealt with departures in Syria and the supply of weapons to organized crime and Islamist groups," Christophe Moulin told LCI of the raid's target.

Searches and raids were also conduced in Brussels, local media said, which targeted a group of "jihadists" who were planning to attack the Belgium capital, similar to the Jan. 7 Paris attack. At least 10 search warrants were issued for simultaneous raids, The Guardianreported, which took place in Brussels, Molenbeek and Vilvoorde.

One of those towns, Vilvoorde, was profiled on Wednesday by the Washington Post's Michael Birnbaum who found it a "hardscrabble Brussels suburb whose marginalized Muslim youths have proved susceptible to quick radicalization."

“We’ve seen that young people here are easily manipulated,” local mosque director Mimoun Aquichouch said. “It’s easy to convince people of this radicalism. They don’t go to school and don’t really know their religion.”

Extremism is not new to Belgium. An estimated 300 residents have traveled from there to Syria or Iraq to fight out of a population of around 11 million—more per capita than France.

Brice De Ruyver, a professor at the Institute for International Research on Criminal Policy at Ghent University, told Mashable that the federal prosecutor did not make a clear link between the Belgium raid and the Paris attacks and that very little is known at the moment for a thorough analysis.

He did point out, though, that these sorts of attacks are the sort that European member states may be confronted with as more and more European fighters in Syria return home.

"This is one of the realities that we have to live with nowadays, as more Syrian fighters come back," Ruyver said. "Let’s not forget that those people were not only trained, they were also active in the war situation in Syria. So they are very well trained they know how to use weapons and I think some of them are indeed a danger to our society—but not all of them and it’s important to make that distinction. And I think it's important to take more preventative measures to prevent radicalization."

Plus: “When you have a major tragedy like what occurred in Paris, western countries are going to be looking at problems internally,” Daveed Garensteen Ross, a terrorism analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Mashable.

It's also unclear who the raided cell was affiliated with, but Mubin Shaikh, a former Taliban recruiter who later became a national security operative in Canada, tells Mashable they were probably ISIS-aligned.

"I'd be shocked if there were no ISIS connections," he said. "There are ISIS connections among Belgian jihadists, particularly in the Sharia4Belgium group," he added referring to a group that's been under investigation for recruiting fighters in Belgium.

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